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Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

catfox.life

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Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#111

Post by renewiltord »

alphabettsy wrote: post #90
goosedragons wrote: post #5

For me personally I found macOS got more in the way than out. Besides being easier to install MS Office on it seemed like every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround. Plus it just really sucks at window management and you're stuck with the macOS UI and whatever tweaks (usually paid) apps can do. For my workflow it just didn't work. I was also extremely annoyed at t…

> every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround > switched to an older thinkpad that runs Linux natively The idea of using an older Thinkpad with Linux having fewer “speed bumps” than any Mac seems hard to imagine based on my own experience. Guess it depends on what you use a computer for.

Bizarrely there was a time when I had the perfect Gnome 2 installation on Ubuntu (16? 14?) and it was better at working like a computer than anything else I’ve had.

But as soon as I upgraded, everything went away. I remember something weird like I could “pick up” a window and swap workspaces and drop it and it was perfect.

I can only guess that that feature was some emergent property of the implementation and not a design goal because I never really got it back.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#112

Post by Klonoar »

alwillis wrote: post #110
QuikAccount wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I had to use a Mac for work for a while. You are right you can tweak MacOS to your liking but the difference is Linux distros actively encourage tweaking while Apple actively discourages and tries to get in the way.

Apple actively discourages and tries to get in the way This is false. Apple doesn’t actively discourage anything. Apple put all of options in the operating system for a reason and ships with a Terminal. The GUI allows regular people to get shit done without requiring them to be experts. Meanwhile, developers, hackers, tinkerers, can tweak to their heart’s content on the things that matter to them while getting the be…

This, yeah.

You can also always disable SIP and spelunk around if you want to. There's just far less of a hivemind for macOS tinkering and it's not as readily apparent to jump into.

But it does exist.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#113

Post by Pop_- »

To my experience, it’s the integrated OCR that really pleased me as a new mac user come from linux. I basically get to treat images with text like normal paragraph. And it just get my daily work done without any issue.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#114

Post by perfopt »

My experience with Macs has been good in most aspects except one. In the years I used a Mac I stopped tinkering and OS/systems related hobby projects.

I continued to use Linux at work. I recently set up a home firewall with OpenBSD and have an itch to assemble a desktop exclusively for *BSD and Linux. If only hardware prices were not so high...

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#115

Post by tshaddox »

renewiltord wrote: post #111
alphabettsy wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround > switched to an older thinkpad that runs Linux natively The idea of using an older Thinkpad with Linux having fewer “speed bumps” than any Mac seems hard to imagine based on my own experience. Guess it depends on what you use a computer for.

Bizarrely there was a time when I had the perfect Gnome 2 installation on Ubuntu (16? 14?) and it was better at working like a computer than anything else I’ve had. But as soon as I upgraded, everything went away. I remember something weird like I could “pick up” a window and swap workspaces and drop it and it was perfect. I can only guess that that feature was some emergent property of the implementation and not a d…

I think there was one point in like 2005-2006 where I had Linux running with multiple monitors and I had found one winmodem that I magically was able to get working. I want to say I was using openSUSE. I had no idea what I was doing but I sure worked hard at experimenting and trying random things!

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#116

Post by LeFantome »

alphabettsy wrote: post #90
goosedragons wrote: post #5

For me personally I found macOS got more in the way than out. Besides being easier to install MS Office on it seemed like every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround. Plus it just really sucks at window management and you're stuck with the macOS UI and whatever tweaks (usually paid) apps can do. For my workflow it just didn't work. I was also extremely annoyed at t…

> every few months I'd encounter some speed bump caused by Apple and I'd have to find a workaround > switched to an older thinkpad that runs Linux natively The idea of using an older Thinkpad with Linux having fewer “speed bumps” than any Mac seems hard to imagine based on my own experience. Guess it depends on what you use a computer for.

My house has two iMacs in it. One is running the latest Mac OS on it because it can. The other has Manjaro Linux on it because it is too old to run the latest OS and I kept running little roadblocks because of that ( or big ones like current apps not being compatible ).

I can use either one but I find the older hardware with Manjaro on it more productive for me. I do a bit of .NET dev and Docker / Distrobox stuff but honestly it is mostly office work ( Zoom, MS Teams, presentations, spreadsheets, email, Slack, and the web / cloud ). All the software I use is totally up to date though and, as above, I just run into fewer “speed bumps” on Linux.

To be fair, that suits my wife just fine. She is in Marketing and teaches as a prof. She definitely prefers the Mac experience the newer iMac brings. Then again, she asks me to help her with stuff quite often. So she is certainly running into her share of “speed bumps” too.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#117

Post by LeFantome »

alphabettsy wrote: post #104
marssaxman wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That was my experience. I never consciously switched; I just realized, one day, that I had stopped bothering to use my Mac in favor of my Linux-based, second-hand Thinkpad. MacOS used to be my home, but over time it steadily felt more like Apple's home, in which I was only welcome if I did things their way. Linux offers its own frustrations, but at least it's my machine.

Sure but that’s a completely different argument. I don’t think anyone would argue that Linux is not more customizable or does not give you more options.

I do not believe they meant only that it was more customizable. I understand the feeling that your computer works for Apple instead of working for you. I think that is what he meant by Linux feeling like “my machine” and the Mac feeling like “Apple’s home”. I feel the same.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#118

Post by LeFantome »

dopeboy wrote: post #55

Ubuntu user since the 5.04 days. The vertical integration the apple ecosystem offers is incredible and not something linux can ever compete with. I see my fiancee use her iphone with her apple tv and her mac - everything connects together, seamlessly. There are walled garden elements to it but look, I'm done fighting the FOSS fight I waged in my late teens and early 20s. I got work to do, my life to live, etc. My adv…

I am not arguing really. I think you are mostly right.

That said, I use Zoom daily on Manjaro and have not had that happen. It happened to me just last week on my iPhone though.

While I love Airplay, I use Plex to stream media not only to my iPhone and the Apple TV downstairs but also to my Roku, my LG TV, an Amazon Fire stick, and my son’s Android tablet. Even after buying expensive apps, I could never get AirPlay working on the Fire stick or the LG TV ( the places my wife wants to watch ).

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#119

Post by prmoustache »

technobabbler wrote: post #88
prmoustache wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whether it's Netflix, games, Office/Photoshop, obscure drivers, whatever... I can just run an app and expect it to work, and if it doesn't, it's not my problem. I'll wait a while and someone else will fix it. I don't have to tweak obscure config files or apply patches or sideload package manager repos." I am not sure what you mean. I have been a linux user for the last 25years and I haven't had to apply any patch ma…

You probably don't run the same hardware or software, then. DRM doesn't quite work on Linux (so no 4k). MS Office, a business need, requires WINE or similar. No Adobe. There's Proton now for games, but only a tiny sliver of the full Steam library, especially for less-popular indie games (which is where most of the innovation is in PC gaming). I've had bad drivers melt my dining table when the fan wouldn't kick in and…

Adobe softwares can be replaced by other tools and their licensing these day make it something you don't want regardless of the platform it would run on.

Office 365 works well enough on the web, calligra and libreoffice are compatible enough to make it a non issue. You can even upload and work on odf documents on office 365 these days.

I like having 4k in the living room and I have a chromecast for that but I'd rather not have my gf and kids play 4k content while I am working at home and they all have 1080p or lower laptop screen anyway. You don't miss retina if you never used it.

As for the rest of your experience, I guess it comes from poor buying skills. You don't buy a Dell to run MacOS on it. I purchase my laptops and hardware with linux compatibility in mind.

Saying Linux UI is a poor windows 7 ripoff is a lie. I am actually one of the - usually silent - happy gnome 3 user and I think it is a superior desktop UI to anything Microsoft and Apple have produced so far. You get a very focused window without any distraction from unneeded icons and information everywhere and everything can be piloted quickly with the keyboard but also work flawlessly with a touch screen in tablet mode when I flip my Lenovo Yoga.

Re: Daily-driving a Mac, one year later

#120

Post by prmoustache »

awilfox wrote: post #81
prmoustache wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Whether it's Netflix, games, Office/Photoshop, obscure drivers, whatever... I can just run an app and expect it to work, and if it doesn't, it's not my problem. I'll wait a while and someone else will fix it. I don't have to tweak obscure config files or apply patches or sideload package manager repos." I am not sure what you mean. I have been a linux user for the last 25years and I haven't had to apply any patch ma…

> I haven't had to apply any patch manually for the last 15 at the very least You're very lucky. I've had to apply patches manually for the majority of my Linux experience, to the point where I can literally recite you the package patch contribution instructions for Fedora, Gentoo, Debian, and Arch from memory .

Just buy hardware that is compatible from a start too.
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